You want cheap goods?
This is the price others have to pay.
3080 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2008
The ConDems are happy to see children live in poverty and to deny those who are have the ability, but not the liquidity, a university education.
Maybe if we dropped the ridiculous target of 50% getting degrees, dropped some of the absurd degrees and removed the stigma of "only" being a tradesman (plus gave "engineer" protected status like "doctor") we'd get somewhere.
Oh yeah, and maybe if we (when I say "we", I mean the various political pirates, er, parties) stopped letting multi-billion pound multi-national corporations avoid paying their fair share of tax, we would not be in the state we are in.
Coupled to that, actually regulating the financial sharks that destroyed the economy in the first place. Quite why bankers are getting bonuses again beats me.
The Windows phones I have had to endure needed hard boots at least once a day.
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MS is nowhere in the mobiles space (and never has been). One must wonder why they are now making this sudden play, is it just to collect patents and make money of the sweat of others?
MS nearly lost the netbook market with their arrogance and only serious back-pedalling over XP (assisteed by the ineptitude/inexperience of the Linux distros) allowed them to regain their hold. The problem with the mobile market is that Linux et al are already entrenched, integrated and working very well; this is not how it was when netbooks started.
I seriously hope the various Linux groups can use the mobile space as a chink in MS's armour and then spread to other areas such as the desktop (i.e a share in double or near-double digits). Only time will tell.
...Meerkat week*. It's interesting that MS decided to push the PR drones into overdrive and launch this week; was this some attempt to over-shadow Canonical (which is a minnow in the OS market, but gets a fair bit of press) whilst at the same time launch their polished turd?
As for MS stopping a monopoly (mentioned in another Reg story), please; the mobile market is quite diverse already with some establish, rising and others fading (Blackberry, Meego, Symbian, iOs, Android). This market does not need the "help" of a known monopoly abuser to remian diverse, it's doing that very well already.
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*Other weeks are available, your mileage may vary.
If I give you my PayPal account details, will you send me the £200+ I'd need to upgrade? No? Thought not.
I'll use XP until it either goes out of support* or I no longer rely on a single PC for everything. Then it will be Linuxed. Personally I cannot afford the cost of Windows 7 and, after having to endure it in my day job, I wouldn't want it anyway.
And, more to the point, why should I upgrade something that does, pretty much, what I need? I could do a re-install and fix the whole C:\S: thing but then, as I said above, I'd just Linux the fecker.
*sp3 is still under support before anyone says anything
1) They can make upgrades, back-ups etc a bit easier
2) They can allow the use of different file systems for different tasks
3) They can allow one to move files on to a separate spindle for performance
I will agree that some of the above are not for the new user and not partitions in the strict sense but doing it is not necessarily a "Bad Thing"(tm); it all depends on one's needs and at least Linux will *let* one partition (and re-partition) easily.
I have recently almost lost the will to live trying to get XP to move "Documents and Settings" from "C:" to "S:" to make better use of the second drive. The fact that an "industry standard" OS cannot do this simple thing is, frankly, a sick joke.
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I agree totally about you "disc failure" statement. Everyone should run back-ups. I was getting the bike MOT'd and the place I went to had had a crash - 2 years of records down the toilet, no back-up. It makes your mind boggle. Back-ups easy to do (including off-site as well) and only idiots don't.
...not letting a certain large mobile phone company avoid paying about £6billion*? How much research would that pay for?
The ConDems are happy enough to see children in poverty and the middle classes squeezed, but heave fore-fend that their pals in Big Business should ever have to pay their fair share. Hence all the cuts in benefits and the increase in tax investigation - but not against the biggest tax dodgers.
Labour would have been no better, mind you.
Those three parties in summary:
Labour - you will obey the machine.
Tory - do as you are told, peasant.
LibDem - er, well, yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but...
...if there was nothing "sensitive" in the crypto file, most people would probably hand the password over just for the sake of convenience (but then why use crypto in the first place?)
My crypto files don't contain kiddy porn or anything, but they do contain account information, passwords, PINs and other sensitive information on my life. There is no bloody way I am handing my password over to plod. It would mean closing every account (current, savings, mortgage etc) and then opening new ones (activity in itself that might seem "suspicious").
So, by the simple act of trying to keep one's life in order and following good practice; one is effectively rendering oneself guilty. Thank you "Labour" and your destruction of liberty.
I can understand why plod might want to see into these files during an investigation (especially into something like kiddy porn) but damning an entire nation in order to to deal with the acts of a minority is NOT the way to do it!
All the majors are suing all the other majors. The total sum of money (payments made + payments made) is zero. The only people getting rich are the lawyers (the perfect definition of a parasite).
If there were less (no?) software patents, the energy and resources wasted funding these legal fiascos could be put into making better products/cutting costs etc.
You mean they will stop patenting the obvious?
Stop suing world+dog for writing software?
Stop trying to destroy open software?
Stop trying to destroy open standards?
Stop trying to break interoperability?
Stop producing software with proprietary extensions (IE, all versions)?
Stop producing software with gaping security holes?
Stop believing the sun shines out their collective fundament?
No?
Thought not.
...is not an offence in the UK either. Dangerous driving is and an office *may* decide that undertaking is dangerous.
Anyway...
The biker was a moron and deserves to lose their license (I say this as a fellow biker; although no doubt the usual suspects [e.g MCN] will use this as more "anti-motorcyclist" fodder). We need retards like that on the road like we need DVD-truckers.
The cop was totally unprofessional and deserves serious censure for his attitude and subsequent treatment of the biker. Good to see the judge sorting things out.
If any other bikers are reading this - wheelies are cool. So are stoppies/endos, standing on the seat etc. Really cool. I like a good stunt show, me. On a closed track. With barrier. And medical crew.
Save if for the appropriate place.
"The best way to avoid being involved in a collision, or being caught by my officers"
Well, as "his officers" are going to do sod all when they do catch someone, why should anyone care? Grow a pair and take these morons to task! This driver should have been prevented from continuing, charged and his employer contacted to deal with the truck.
[Lack of] Enforcement of the rules in this manner is exactly why there are so many idiots on our roads.
If by "worst" you mean "works pretty much OOTB and does not require much CLI, although the user is somewhat abstracted from the guts and there are a few proprietary bits" then you are 100% correct. Or perhaps you expect everyone to use custom Arch builds?
You may not like Ubuntu (and there are things that annoy me about it too) but, for now, it's my penguin of choice and it still (IMnsHO) years ahead of Win7. And at least you are free to choose any distro you choose and they will quite happily play together to a very large degree (unlike certain other OSs I can think of, that refuse to play ball with anyone and can only deal with two file-systems).
"If the government loses the case, it faces fines of millions of pounds per day until it brings UK law in line with European law."
Should read:
"If the government loses the case, the UK taxpayer faces fines of millions of pounds per day until it brings UK law in line with European law."
Obviously the bribes and back-hander BT handed out to the unelected and secretive EU-wonks wasn't enough. UK MPs must be much, much cheaper to buy. Hmm....haven't there been news stories about that fairly recerntly?
Was that directed at me?
Idiot I may be, but the theory of risk compensation (or risk homeostasis is you prefer) isn't.
It's where people try to keep the perceived risk at a level they are comfortable (excitement/arousal offset against fear). If you make things too safe, people try to up the risk factor. If you make them dangerous (or at least, seem dangerous) then people do what they can to lower the risk factor.
So, spikes on steering wheels? Yup, if they were on all cars then people would take more care.
The studies have been done, the evidence is there. Two launch points for you:
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-balance-of-risk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
Just how bloody hard is it to NOT text and drive? How the hell did these morons ever get a licence? If they think they can use a mobile and drive at the same time, they are not fit to be on the roads. It is that bloody simple. Do not use a mobile and drive, dip-wads.
The bigger problem, of course, is enforcing the laws. If cars had black boxes it might be possible to check logs: "2010-09-30T10:08:30Z, Impact, 70mph" correlated with phone records "2010-09-30T10:08:20Z, Text sent, recipient 'Snuggles'" would be cast iron proof that the driver was texting (assuming they were only occupant). Life ban, jail time and a massive fine would seem to be in order.
I would not object to such a "black-box" type thing so long as it did not have some kind of up-link/continuous monitoring. Not only would it allow text-tards to be nailed to the wall (something I propose as a new national sport), it could also greatly reduce the hassle with insurance claims.
In summary...
When you are driving, nothing is more important than driving safely. Nothing. Not that text, not your fag, not your cola. So put the phone the hell down and *IF* it 'bings' and you think it might be urgent, bloody well pull-over and deal with it safely. Whatever little thing has just happened is not worth my (or anyone else's) life.
A few of questions...
1) Does anyone know if carbon reinforced motorcycle gloves can penetrate car window glass in a single blow?
2) If so, and one does punch through said glass to remonstrate with the text-tard; can one use the defence of committing a minor crime in order to prevent a greater one?
3) Do I need to go back on the dried frog pills?
...how much would be saved if we stopped using HTML for e-mail? No pictures, colours etc; just good ol' plain text and meaningful content. If pictures etc were important, they could simply be attached.
This might not only be green, but it would save me wanting to commit physical violence against the marketing-turd that sends out a hee-ooj mail, with masses of images/links that says...err...sweet f. a. when you get down to it.
With lock-in you can give an artificially low purchase price and claw the loss back through other subsequent (e.g. mobile, printers...). The low initial price suckers people in and then they keep giving you money.
With more open solutions, the purchaser would have to pay a realistic price up-front for a device. This is why (say) a Droid phone is "free" on a contract but £400-ish to buy outright.
Companies like lock-in for the recurring revenue, and most users are too stupid to do the maths and figure out which option is better for them.
The big thing that pisses me off about lock-in is when a simple feature is missing and you can't add it (e.g. streaming movies from a PC to a Wii or old-xBox) without hacking into it.
I guess I would settle for lock-in that at least co-operated with open standards.
Haven't people worked out that under Labour you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent (and even when you do that, you can't claim back the costs [and no, this is not a fiction])?
Labour also ensured our armed forces had inadequate kit and started a plethora of PFI/PPP schemes that will see the pretty decent training they get now, ruined by firms whose primary goal is money and not ensuring the safety of this nation (think what you like about military forces, but it's a crap job and the very least you can do is provide adequate kit [helicopters, ballistics vests etc] when you send people off to do a potentially lethal job. 'Elf 'n Safety, innit?)
Whilst the ConDems having ownership of "the British tradition of liberty" is worrying, Labour having ownership of it gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies.
No one did more to reduce our civil liberties and enact some of the most stringent interpretation of EU law than Labour. Even the Germans are willing to tell people where to get off over EU Arrest Warrants. But with our Labourised "British tradition of liberty" we allow people to be dragged off to countries with extremely dubious legal practices.
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[note: I am not a Toffee-nosed nor a Fence-Sitter supporter]
I asked is "cygwin" had been considered, I did not say "Use cygwin! It's the wins! L0LZ!!11!" The author had looked at various tools and not mentioned "cygwin", so my question seems perfectly reasonable to me (others have asked the same question).
You seem to have taken umbrage at a few "cygwin" related posts, do you have an issue with this tool (I used it for some light-weight ssh and rsync work and really like it). If you do, have you filled bugs, got involved?
Or do you know something about "cygwin" and large jobs? "Oh, you can't use cygwin for that because it's job index will overflow, see bug-1234".
Or are you just some reactionary pillock who can't see through the Windows? "!Microsoft==Bad"
I know which conclusion I am drawing at the moment...
OK then - leave the 'net alone!
Prediction: Google begins to use tech that is not part of an open and accepted standard, locking customers (companies and individuals) to their platform. Businesses did not learn from IBM, and did not learn from MS. They are doomed to shaft themselves again.
...I drive a second-hand Polo. The driver's door requires the key to lock it, just like every other car I have ever owned. And needing the key to lock the driver's door has one other advantage - you can't lock yourself out easily.
Sorry to burst your bubble, not all of us can afford/want to buy new top-end cars every few years.